Sentience
by Pyralis Anacreon
Summary: On the night of the full moon, a birdwatcher sets up his video camera to point at a little island, and falls asleep. What he finds in the morning is not footage of owls as he expected, but of cats.


Sentience

* * *

On the night of the full moon, a birdwatcher sets up his video camera to point at a little island, and falls asleep. What he finds in the morning is not footage of owls as he expected, but of cats.

* * *

Jack Dylan liked animals. Specifically, he liked birds. Even more, he loved owls.

There was a story behind this near-obsession. He'd been lost in the woods, once, when he was a child, on a family camping trip. It was dusk and the path had faded before his very eyes. But he was enamored by the forest, unafraid of its shadows, and he did not notice when he fell behind. His parents were a young couple, still madly in love with each other and him, at that time not knowing of the bitter divorce to come. And little Jack—maybe five, maybe six, his parents never agreed—got lost. Very lost, as it turned out. He spent the entire night in the forest.

The first four hours were spent in screaming panic—literally—but the trees swallowed his weak, frightened calls. Eventually, he calmed enough to realize there were probably big, dangerous things in this forest. This got him so worked up, imagining bears and wolves and tigers, that he yelped in fright at every little sound.

And then he saw it.

'It' was an owl, sitting on a branch, looking at him curiously. It was young, though he didn't know it, and it had been warned against humans, but it was curious as well. Jack looked at this fearless creature, smaller than him, barely a mouthful for those giant wolves, and he wished he had wings, to fly up and away from this dark and scary forest, to find his parents.

Well, wings didn't come to him, so he settled for the next best thing. He held out a hand, slowly, like he always was supposed to with that dog that lived down the street. And the young owl, by some choice known only to it, figured that he wasn't a threat—maybe it was the scent of his fear—so it swooped down quite suddenly, talons locking around his skinny arm.

Jack was too surprised and overjoyed to feel the pain of sharp points dug into his skin, but he would later. For just then, he stared at the beautiful owl, which seemed to weigh nothing on his arm.

He stayed like that until it flew away in search of food. When he finally put his arm down and came back to his senses to find his entire body aching with the effort of standing so still for so long, he realized there were little spots of blood on his sleeve, and he was shivering with cold. He spent the rest of the night looking for the owl, which he had come to believe protected him from the beastly dangers of the forest.

Of course, Jack now knew a lot about owls, and that what he had experienced was highly unusual. But his fascination with them had only grown deeper, and during the divorce, the study of owls and even other birds had been his salvation. After getting over his fear of forests—brought on by that same incident—Jack had become an avid birdwatcher.

All of that had led to tonight, one of many nights before and many nights to come. It was the full moon, which meant that there would be plenty of natural lighting and no need to disturb his subjects with artificial lights. He'd chosen a new spot to set up, high in a tree, overlooking a small island just off the shore of this lake. Jack hoped to catch footage of some of his precious birds tonight.

Despite the warm coffee in his hands and the energy drink sitting nearby—just sniffing it brought him awake, ugh, the _smell_—Jack fell asleep.

* * *

He didn't examine the video card right in his little nest—one hunters used when going after deer—but it was a close thing. He managed to wait the entire drive home, and even unpack the car before the call became too strong. Plugging the camera into the computer, Jack waited excitedly.

He fast-forwarded through it at the lowest setting, keeping both eyes out for any movement, any at all. At first there was nothing, and then....

A river of movement, at one edge of the island, crossing over what looked like a fallen tree. Zooming in, thanking himself for buying a good-quality camera, Jack found... cats?

Strange. About ten cats, traveling in a pack, across the natural bridge to the island. He tracked their progress, toward the center and the large tree there—he'd thought about setting up there, but decided it might actually be a place an owl roosted in. And then more movement caught his eye—even more cats, again in a group, crossing the tree, going to the island, the center of it. Again, about ten of them, maybe more this time. Then a third group, less than the others but still far more than he'd ever seen in one place before. And a fourth, biggest of them all, with at least fifteen.

The cats, all of them, not a one leaving, gathered beneath the huge tree, looking up into it. Like a subject might look to a king.

Jack focused the camera onto the tree, and found four cats sitting in it.

He watched it six times, noticing new details each round. Those four cats were the leaders of the packs; there was one from each in the tree. They meowed down to the cats below and to the other leaders, and when a cloud crossed the moon every cat looked up, and started up a cacophony that had to have been so loud it was a wonder the video camera's mike hadn't caught it. Then the leaders meowed for a while, and things settled down. They left, sorting themselves into their own, specific groups.

Jack liked animals. Specifically, birds. But as he watched those cats organize themselves and talk to each other, he began to think that here there might be something more.

* * *

Jayfeather had gotten used to StarClan visiting his dreams. He did it to other cats himself, after all, so it would be very hypocritical of him to ask them to stop.

As usual, they had a task for him. And as usual, it involved a journey.

"'Go to the human's dens' they say." He snorted. "'There is danger in the glass eye, which never blinks and always sees.' What the hell does that mean?"

"Jayfeather...." Lionblaze said tiredly from behind him. "If you don't stop muttering I'll have to worry for you sanity."

"What sanity?" The blind cat snapped. "I swear, you and the Clan drove me mad within a day of being an apprentice!"

The warrior sighed, plodding forward steadily. They had alerted Firestar that they would be leaving, of course—but the Clan leader probably wouldn't like getting the message from a kit who'd promised not to tell until sunrise, after the rest of the clan returned from the Gathering. So they had gotten a head start, one the pair made good time on. And he was pretty sure they'd done enough to cover their tracks.

Jayfeather had started the muttering at about the time Lionblaze dragged him through a stream to put off their trackers.

They'd been walking all night, and were so close to the human dens that he could smell it. He thought if he lived there all the time, his nose would stop working altogether. No wonder kittypets were so stupid.

"This way." Jayfeather said, pointing with his tail.

Lionblaze still found a little creepy his blind littermate was leading him around. There was saying in here somewhere.

They made it into the human dens, at about the time the monsters started waking up.

"Oh, relax," Jayfeather said exasperatedly as the sandy cat jumped again at a distant rumble. "They're not actually alive, you know."

"What?"

Jayfeather gave him an 'Are you stupid?' look, which changed to an 'Oh, forgot I was the only reasonable one in our clan' look. "They only wake up when a twoleg gets inside. They're not eaten, they control the monster, like those humans riding the horses."

"Oh." Lionblaze had never thought to make that connection before. But it made sense, really. He suddenly remembered why Jayfeather was the brains and he was the brawn. It should probably have wounded his pride, but, well, his brother was _blind_. He had to have something going in his favor to make up for that.

Jayfeather led them up to a den, and then through a partially open window. He seemed to know exactly where to go, up some sort of series of small rising cliffs that they took two at a time, across a wide ledge lined with two walls. Twolegs were so weird, Lionblaze thought. Why were their dens so complicated?

Finally, they went through an opening in a wall, high enough for a twoleg to walk through, and inside was the weirdest thing the cats had ever seen. It was like a raised stone, completely flat and square, covered with something soft like the best moss but thin, and also thick as well. And on top of this laid a twoleg, sleeping peacefully.

Jayfeather jumped up on top of the platform, motioning for Lionblaze to do the same, and he settled in carefully beside the human.

"Sleep." He whispered.

Lionblaze thought he could never sleep in a human's house, but there was this amazing sunbeam and the platform was so comfortable, and he was asleep in moments.

* * *

Jack had never thought much of dreams—a way to pass the time in sleep, something to miss briefly when you wake up until they fade from your mind. But he didn't think he'd ever forget this one.

He was in a forest. It looked like any other forest, but he somehow knew it wasn't. When a gray-ish cat with blind blue eyes appeared, followed by a sandy colored one, he became absolutely sure it was not to be a normal dream.

Then it spoke.

"Hey." It said, like speaking cats were the most normal thing in the world. "Because of you, I've had to wear out my paws over thunderpaths and rocks and _streams_--" It glared at the sandy one. "--To find you, so tell me whatever you did tonight so I can leave."

"Um." Jack said intelligently.

"Well?" The angry one asked.

"Um." Jack said, a little more forcefully.

"Are you dumb?" The cat asked. "Just had to be the one twoleg not ready to start talking my ear off." It muttered to itself.

"Good kitty?" Jack tried.

"Not a stupid kittypet, here." It told him snappily. "What were you doing last night?"

"Watching birds. With a video camera." Jack finally managed to say.

"And that would be...?"

"Something that records... sights, so that they can be shown over and over again." Jack tried to explain in terms a cat would understand.

The cat seemed to be thinking. "Okay, I think I know why I'm here." It said. "We can leave, now, Lionblaze.

"What about him?" The other cat asked.

The first one snorted again. "He'll think it was all a dream...."

* * *

When Jack Dylan woke up in the morning, he very clearly remembered his dream. He also remembered that his camera had been intact last night, but was now lying in pieces on the floor, where it had fallen.

Except that it had been in the middle of his desk, and those wires hadn't cut themselves.

* * *

"I can't believe you took a freaking _trophy_." Lionblaze muttered.

Jayfeather shrugged. "I wanted a memento to remember my first dream-walk with a twoleg." He said, around the bits of thin, hard, malleable vines. "Besides, I think these will be even better than spider webs at holding on poultices."

Lionblaze rolled his eyes, because as much as Jayfeather protested being a medicine cat, he was damned good at it.


End file.
